The Virgin and the Barbie Doll

I may have said this before, but one thing I regret about my first go-around with young adult literature is that, with rare exceptions (To Kill a Mockingbird being the first that springs to mind), the books I read were from a decidedly male point of view. Even Mockingbird, with its ambiguously-named author (Harper Lee) and its tomboy protagonist, seemed hesitant to express a feminine perspective. The male authors I read generally seemed unconcerned with developing three-dimensional characters that were young women (I'm not counting mothers, aunts, or other adults). Their portrayal of teenage females tended to fall into one of three categories: objects of affection and/or obsession, underdeveloped sidekicks, or ghosts.

I imagine that the "object of affection" category was a pretty safe bet from a commercial standpoint; for a good percentage of boys- particularly the kind that tended to have their noses in books- this is exactly what girls were: fantasy. Unapproachable. Objects. Sometimes, as in William Wharton's Birdy, the narrator doesn't even bother to give the girls names- just "the cheerleader" or "so-and-so's girlfriend." Frank Portman gives his girls names in King Dork, but they still more or less function as sex objects, and the narrator's "groups of three" theory about female friendships is rather cartoonish. On one hand, I can't blame a male author- particularly when his narrator is supposed to be a teenage boy- for sticking to what he knows- but on the other, it seems to me that one goal of an author ought to be to expose the reader to something he or she doesn't know or hasn't thought about. Birdy and King Dork succeed as novels for other reasons, but certainly not for their enlightening portrayal of women.

One of many Catcher in the Rye elements King Dork borrows- and his narrator all but confesses to the parallel- is the character of Holden Caulfield's precocious little sister, Phoebe- though he insists that "she's nothing like [his] sister, Amanda" (94). Nevertheless, Amanda seems to pop in to Tom's story in moments where he needs wisdom or encouragement, or simply a slap on the back of the head to remind him of who he is. Otherwise, she's absent, presumably waiting offstage for her cue to enter again. We don't get a whole lot of insight into what makes Amanda Amanda, but then again, this is Tom's story. She's sort of a second-tier sidekick, with just enough character- a comment here, a gesture there- to make her lovable. When I first read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, I feared that Hermione would be stuck in a similar role for the whole series, but was pleasantly surprised to find her character arc as dynamic as Harry's or Ron's over the course of seven books. I think Ginny Weasely eventually filled that part. But here's the thing: I find myself loving those sort of idealized little sister characters- Phoebe and Amanda and Ginny, as unrealistic as they may be, and I think that's the point; just as boys want to read about inaccessible dreamgirl types, they also long for an unthreatening, pure, and approachable symbol of femininity. It's like a literary version of what Freudian psychoanalysts call the Madonna/whore complex (I tried to find a good link for you on this, but the best my searches came up with was this article about Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers, which is perhaps telling, but not entirely pertinent).

The most extreme case of an author avoiding three dimensional depictions of young women occurs when the author simply constructs a world devoid of females altogether. William Golding's Lord of the Flies comes to mind as the most striking version of this, with its plot centered around a group of British schoolboys whose plane crashes on a desert island during World War II. Ta-da! No girls. Much less fantastical is a book like A Separate Peace, which takes place at an all-boys' school and so has little use for female characters, other than occasional mothers or faculty wives. I'm okay with this- particularly because, with sex objects and angelic little sister types out of the way, it opens up the possibility of a more emotionally nuanced portrayal of boys. When Phineas admits for the first time to Gene that he is his "best pal," Gene struggles for an appropriately masculine response:

It was a courageous thing to say. Exposing a sincere emotion nakedly like that at the Devon school was the next thing to suicide. I should have told him then that he was my best friend also and rounded out what he had said. I started to; I nearly did. But something held me back.

It could be argued that, by eliminating girls from the equation, authors like Golding and John Knowles are playing it safe, not risking the inadvertent creation of two dimensional female characters. But it seems that sometimes, as in A Separate Peace, the absence of half-formed girls allows for more fully-formed boys.

I'll try to talk more about the female characters I've discovered in Speak and The Lovely Bones, both written by female authors, when I'm back here on Monday. But tell me: have I missed some well developed young ladies in books written by men? Is my characterization of the girls in the books I've discussed unfair? Give me some feedback.